The Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta is on. It’s a trifle later than expected (by two days), but Microsoft has made good by extending the beta an extra day, thus you can now plasma-filet fellow players through January 18.
The beta should be downloadable by 12 p.m. ET Monday afternoon — but you need to own Halo: The Master Chief Collection to qualify for access.
@gameelite46 Halo 5: Guardians MP Beta will go live at 9AM PST.
Microsoft released a trailer a little over a week ago that walks through some of the beta’s features. It’ll focus on 4v4 Arena play across seven maps and three game types, and represents “only a small portion” of the final product, according to Redmond.
The final version of the game — which will let you play as a brand new character, Spartan Locke, sleuthing for an M.I.A. Master Chief — launches this fall (somewhere between September 23 and December 21) on Xbox One.
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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Activision's futuristic first-person shooter in which players take on a rogue private military company uses a brand new engine built specifically for PCs and new-gen consoles to handle its cutting-edge lighting, animation and physics.
Sledgehammer Games/ActivisionFar Cry 4. This pulled back shot of fictional Himalayan region Kyrat is in-game, believe it or not, rendered with an overhauled version of the engine Ubisoft used to design Far Cry 3.
UbisoftThe Last of Us: Remastered. Naughty Dog's meditation on the worst (and best) of humanity is built on technology that reaches back through the studio's pulp-adventure Uncharted series.
The graphics are so impressive,
TIME recently assigned a conflict photographer to photograph inside the game.Ashley Gilbertson for TIMEAlien: Isolation
Built from scratch, the Alien: Isolation engine's outstanding deep space visuals all but replicate the set design of Alien film concept artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb's work.
The Creative AssemblyAssassin's Creed Unity. Ubisoft says it "basically remade the whole rendering engine" in its AnvilNext design tool to handle the studio's meticulous recreation of Paris during the French Revolution.
UbisoftChild of Light
Inspired by filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki and artist Yoshitaka Amano, Child of Light's hand-drawn artwork puts the lie to presumptions that graphical richness depends on shader support or polygon counts.
UbisoftDestiny
Built from scratch by ex-Halo studio Bungie, Destiny's game engine was designed to scale across the next decade, says the studio.
BungieMario Kart 8
Nintendo's kart-racer for Wii U reminds us that raw horsepower is just a facet of crafting a beautiful game world.
NintendoInfamous Second Son
Sucker Punch's freeform Seattle-based superhero adventure models all sorts of minutia, from the intricate wrinkling of an aged character's face to the way eyelids stick, slightly, before separating when characters blink.
Sucker Punch Productions Monument Valley
Escher-like at first glance, Ustwo's mind-bending puzzler was also inspired by posters, bonsai plants, arabic calligraphy and filmmaker Tarsem Singh's The Fall.
UstwoGrand Theft Auto V
Rockstar's remastered crime spree opus was crafted from an in-house engine first employed in a game that simulated table tennis.
RockstarTitanfallRespawn EntertainmentForza Horizon 2
Turn 10's Euro-racer actually models light refracted through drops of moisture, the render tech plausibly simulating something as intangible but essential as the earth’s atmosphere.
Microsoft Studios/Turn 10 Studios80 Days
Inkle's anti-colonialist vamp on Jules Verne's famous novel uses crisp art deco imagery inspired by travel posters to unfurl 80 Days' tale of intrepid globetrotters Monsieur Fogg and his valet Passepartout.
InkleTomb Raider
Crystal Dynamics' radical reboot of its popular series about an athletic archaeologist uses a modified version of the engine that powered Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006.
Square Enix
In related news, Microsoft is opening up preorders for the full Halo 5 game early. It’s happy to part you from a significant wad of your holiday cash if you’re feeling particularly Halo-hardcore: Microsoft is selling a Limited Collector’s Edition of the game, which includes a poster, digital miscellany, items (not specified) wrapped in a steel book, and a numbered statue (of what, also not specified) for $250.
A $100 Limited Edition includes the digital content, items and steel book, while the $60 standard version includes the poster only if you preorder.
